POEM TO KEEP YOU COMPANY
by Gilad Jaffe
All ears! The boat is
in the trees! Inlets, royal
poincianas, the rain! One
& one & one, all the same.
An owl with a wingful of eggs
is making eyes with you through
the window. Some people
call that window a transom.
I’d like to have them all over
for breakfast (we won’t be
cooking any eggs, I promise).
Cackleberries & other future-
birds make for something of an
ornithological gobbledygook,
& New York apartments leave
little room for secrets. The way
ice water tastes after ice cream,
the hidden bosom of Abraham,
how Spanish moss pours down
onto the planet, prettier than
kudzu, & spills with a radiance
that fills even the hollow places.
Maybe you were never really here
in the first place. Starting at zeroes,
listening to pictures. Maybe
the way things change is really the way
things tell you their names.
The sky today has been Yes. I got there
by looking through the ceiling-
fan, which spliced what I saw until
all I could see was myself seeing
& that seeing was a covenant.
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